John Oliver makes some absolutely valid points in this riff on SantaCon events like the Santa Crawl. But obviously he’s not seen how we run ours. Let me counter a couple of his objections.
Oliver comes down hard on Hoboken,
But we’re not Hoboken. In the 15 years that we’ve been running this event, we have never once had an incident with the authorities (at least not to my knowledge – and I check). Behave yourselves folks, don’ be Hoboken.
Oliver also takes a shot at New York City’s fund raising efforts saying that it only works out to a bit more than a dollar per person.
Oliver calculates that New York raises about $50,000 per year and has around 30,000 participants. In our case, we’ve averaged about $10,000 per year with between 500-1000 participants. Do the math for us and we bring in between $10-$20 per person (it all depends on what percentage of people purchase wristbands). Just a reminder that every dollar that is raised by the wristband sales goes to the charity. We don’t siphon any money off to cover expenses.
So don’t be like New York either. Help our cause by buying a wristband. The are available anywhere you see this sign.
Lastly, Oliver objects to this:
In this case, I’m not going to tell you not to do this, I’ll just say “Please, get a room”.